Medical heritage on a website for society to compile list of scattered South Australian items for physical museum
Possibly Australia's first X ray image – of Adelaide University professor and later Nobel laureate William Bragg's hand – from 1897 and an 18th Century ship’s surgeon’s kit are among scattered South Australian items that could be consolidated into a medical heritage museum.
Images courtesy South Australian Medical Heritage Society
The South Australian Medical Heritage Society was established in 1983 to set up a dedicated museum that could collect and exhibit, even on loan, items relevant to developing medical science and practice.
Going into 2021, the museum remained virtual as a website being compiled by the society. With the help of the South Australian Heritage Trust, the society was compiling a record and listing of valuable items that are stored at many sites around the state. Each teaching and most private hospitals had valuable items representing individual themes and topics, such as syringes, radiology equipment, first aid splints and surgical instruments.
Among valuable scattered items was possibly Australia's first X ray – of a hand: Adelaide University professor William Bragg’s – taken in 1897. Accompanied by letter from Mark Oliphant donating it, the X ray was in the radiology department of the Flinders Medical Centre. Another important item was an 18th Century ship’s surgeon’s kit – in a private collection at a Middleton hotel.
Meanwhile, the South Australian Medical Heritage Society virtual museum website had a comprehensive collection of articles and illustrations on medical aspects including: Medicine, surgery, anaesthesia, X rays, hospitals and other organisations, individuals of note, dentistry, nursing and Aboriginal/Chinese/Mediterranean medicines.
On the medicine page, topics range from “Apothecary scales and weights systems”, “Discovery of amoebic meningitis in northern Spencer Gulf towns,” "Bends, caissons, hyperbaric oxygen and the Adelaide hyperbaric unit”, “Legacies of the Crimean War 1854” and “Renal dialysis at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital"